Jakarta - Indonesia's former military chief, Wiranto, tried yesterday to pin
the blame for his probable election defeat on Western poll observers, including
a group headed by former US president Jimmy Carter.

In a bizarre statement released to the media, Mr Wiranto's campaign office
suggested that foreign institutions, including the respected Carter Centre, had
been able to influence the result of Monday's presidential election.

The desperate move suggests Mr Wiranto's advisers may have privately conceded
defeat at the hands of President Megawati Soekarnoputri and former security
minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who will both advance to a second round of
voting in September.

Mr Wiranto, an indicted war criminal who is backed by the giant Golkar party
and is rumoured to have been funded by the former ruling Soeharto family, is
facing a loss that would end his political career.

The statement came after one of Mr Wiranto's senior advisers, former general
Fachrul Razi, told The Australian Financial Review he did not believe the
results of a national quick count released by the Washington-based National
Democratic Institute, showing Mr Wiranto in third place.

He said these results were only believed by "bules" - the sometimes
condescending word used by Indonesians to describe Westerners.

The Wiranto statement alleges that Western observers who came to Indonesia
for the vote had engaged in "strange conduct" at polling stations
outside the major cities before and during Monday's vote.

Without referring to specifics, the statement claimed this operation was
conducted "silently" and was allowed by the Indonesian authorities to
become "out of control".

The statement also claimed that similar "operations" had taken
place in East Timor in 1999 - when East Timorese voted to break away from
Indonesia - and in the 1999 parliamentary election in Indonesia when Golkar was
thrashed.

However, it said this conduct did not occur at parliamentary elections held
in April, in which Golkar won most votes.

When contacted about the statement, an official in Mr Wiranto's media centre,
Despen Ompusunggu, said it was not the official attitude of the campaign team
but was based on reports received from supporters in the regions.

The head of Mr Wiranto's campaign team, Slamet Effendi Yusuf, said Golkar's
own manual count showed late yesterday that Mr Wiranto and Mrs Megawati were
neck-and-neck.

Partial results released yesterday by the General Election Commission showed
Mr Yudhoyono clearly leading the count, with 33.7per cent, ahead of Mrs Megawati
(26.5) and Mr Wiranto (22.1), with about half the vote counted.

An administrative bungle led to millions of votes being wrongly declared
invalid. Indonesian voters marked their ballot papers on Monday using a nail to
pierce a hole in the box next to their preferred candidate. But because they
received the papers folded in half, with the names of the candidates on the top
half, many ended up punching two holes.

Many polling officials decided these votes were invalid, but the General
Election Commission later issued a decree that they must be counted as legal.

Many polling stations did not receive notice of the decree, and some booths
had already closed and completed their count.

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The Straits Times July 8, 2004

Wiranto camp cries foul over recount of votes

The Golkar candidate's team slams the elections commission for allowing votes
that were declared invalid earlier

By Robert Go

JAKARTA - The camp of presidential candidate Wiranto has argued that its
candidate may have been 'cheated' by the General Elections Commission's (KPU)
handling of double-perforated votes.

Wiranto adviser Rully Chairul Azwar told The Straits Times: 'We see the
possibility that Wiranto was disadvantaged, and in a major way.'

They are already talking about the possibility of taking the matter to court.

The Golkar candidate is now embroiled in a do-or-die battle against incumbent
Megawati Sukarnoputri for a second-place finish in Monday's vote and the right
to go one-on-one in September against front runner Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

With around 60 million votes - about half the projected total - counted so
far, the former armed forces chief trails Ms Megawati by 22 per cent to her 27
per cent.

Mr Rully said this goes beyond the sore-loser complex: 'We just don't trust
that the recount has been properly done.

'We have no witnesses and there is no monitoring by us during the process.'

If Mr Wiranto ends up third and loses by a narrow margin to the second-place
candidates, then 'legal or other kinds of challenges' could be launched.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the head of Mr Wiranto's campaign
team, Mr Slamet Effendi Yusuf, said on Tuesday that the decision by KPU to allow
millions of votes that had been declared invalid had 'deeply affected' the
result.

Mr Slamet said that based on his team's counting, Mr Wiranto had been neck
and neck with Mrs Megawati in the battle for second place.

'In parts of Central Java, we gained significant votes in the first count,
but after the recount, we lost to somebody else,' he said.

Even former United States president Jimmy Carter who led a 60-member
observation mission from the Carter Centre had something to say about the
problem.

He criticised the KPU's failure to anticipate the problem with invalid
ballots and its slowness in correcting it, calling it a 'serious mistake'.

The KPU has defended itself and dismissed what happened as a 'technicality'.

Elections-monitoring body Panwaslu, however, said as many as 40 million
ballots might have affected by the problem.

And KPU members are once again under fire, with observers accusing them of
having failed to fix a foreseen and simple problem before vote-counting began.

Voters used a nail to punch a hole in the box corresponding to their choice.

But because the ballot papers were folded in half, many ended up punching
holes both in their candidate's box and in election material printed in the
other half of the sheet.

There was panic on Monday when millions did not completely unfold their
ballots, inadvertently making two marks on the sheets of paper.

The KPU originally said such ballots should be disregarded.

But it reversed the decision as polling centres closed their doors and after
it became clear that the ruling would have made millions of ballots cast that
day invalid, regardless of voters' intentions.

A recount was ordered. Some polling centres complied immediately. But many
among the 575,000 polling centres spread out across the nation did not get the
KPU decree in time.

A consequence of this: Vote tallies accumulated at higher-level counting
centres might have been formulated in two different ways, something that
observers said would definitely skew results.

The KPU had been warned about the possibility of such confusion taking place.
The same problem occurred during mock voting exercises where invalid ballot
rates skyrocketed to as high as 30 per cent.

But the commission failed to nip the problem in the bud and change the ruling
on how such votes are to be counted before Election Day itself.

Political analyst Umar Juoro said: 'It's understandable if Wiranto's team is
thinking of challenging the results.

'The KPU lacked professionalism and was negligent.

'It shows a lack of experience in organising elections over and over again.'